The sage as teacher and source of knowledge: editorial strategies and formulaic utterances in Confucius dialogues

Abstract

The present article discusses selected dialogues between Confucius and Duke Ai of Lu as well as dialogues in which Confucius employs the phrase “I will tell you” ( wu yu ru 吾語汝), mainly to address followers. The analysis focuses on two aspects of the Confucius figure: (1) Confucius as a textual function that serves to integrate and validate disparate textual units within a coherent narrative framework; (2) Confucius as authoritative master who enunciates didactic pronouncements in the presence of his disciples. The latter function is ironically appropriated in Zhuangzi 莊子. The article closes with a reflection on possible future directions of research into uses of the Confucius figure.

Abstract

The present article discusses selected dialogues between Confucius and Duke Ai of Lu as well as dialogues in which Confucius employs the phrase “I will tell you” ( wu yu ru 吾語汝), mainly to address followers. The analysis focuses on two aspects of the Confucius figure: (1) Confucius as a textual function that serves to integrate and validate disparate textual units within a coherent narrative framework; (2) Confucius as authoritative master who enunciates didactic pronouncements in the presence of his disciples. The latter function is ironically appropriated in Zhuangzi 莊子. The article closes with a reflection on possible future directions of research into uses of the Confucius figure.

Download

TrendTerms

TrendTerms displays relevant terms of the abstract of this publication and related documents on a map. The terms and their relations were extracted from ZORA using word statistics. Their timelines are taken from ZORA as well. The bubble size of a term is proportional to the number of documents where the term occurs. Red, orange, yellow and green colors are used for terms that occur in the current document; red indicates high interlinkedness of a term with other terms, orange, yellow and green decreasing interlinkedness. Blue is used for terms that have a relation with the terms in this document, but occur in other documents.
You can navigate and zoom the map. Mouse-hovering a term displays its timeline, clicking it yields the associated documents.